Christmas for Ransom Read Free

wasn’t one to back down in the face of a challenge. While the sagebrush burned in its circle of stones and Gitts skinned a jackrabbit, Canyon reckoned he might ease his mind and cleanse his soul by keeping the hardest part of her promise. Seems a man who could bankrupt the great Stony Brook ranch could at least learn to read and write at the ripe old age of twenty-five.
    “Ahab says we’re off to New Mexico at sunup. Wasn’t hard at all unloading those Stony ponies.” Gitts guffawed at his little rhyme and elbowed his bulging pocket. “Should be there in time for Christmas. Maybe it’s warmer there.”
    An idea slipped into Canyon’s head and wouldn’t get out. Christmas. Ahab Perkins had never minded a man taking time now and again for family or a sweetheart back home. It was the perfect ruse.
    He stood right up, swaying a bit from the whiskey. If he rode hard, he could get to Pleasure Stakes before night came for good. A town with a name like that should have plenty of hot baths and good meals, a plentiful saloon, and well, bountiful whores to tend his need until he started the serious matter of reading and writing.
    In the battered metal of his flask, he caught a hazy reflection and winked. He knew right well his whiskey-colored eyes could bring a woman to her knees, and more female fingers than he could count had wound themselves in his ripe-wheat hair to draw his face close during the act of love.
    Truth to tell, his take from the Stony Brook robbery had filled his pockets with plenty of cash to satisfy all his appetites for days to come. With surely enough left over to hire some sort of tutor. He nodded at his brilliant plans. Too many nights lately he’d shivered in drafty line shacks, stuffed between two feedbags for warmth and praying for summertime.
    All the while seeing the face of the old lady from the Stony mingling with memories of his gram-maw. He was downright weary of tossing and turning to bad dreams each night. He cussed out loud.
    “Hell.”
    Gitts looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged so as not to have to talk. Well, after finding his pleasures at the Stakes, he’d hire a tutor to get Gram-maw’s promise done. He reckoned he owed her that much. Learning might take a bit of time, though. When he was a kid, school days had never seemed to end. Losing his job wasn’t a worry. Ahab would hold his place; Canyon had proven his worth.
    “I think I’ll take off for a piece. Got kin in the Panhandle,” he said the lie slow but reckoned Gitts would believe him even if he claimed he was off to sundance with the Sioux.
    “Kin?” Gitts’ eyes took on a faraway look. “Kinfolk? Why, that’s a nice thought. Good for you.” He turned to the meat crisping over the fire. “Me, I had a mama once. She named me ‘Royal.’ Said my daddy treated her like a queen for giving him a son.”
    “You from Texas?”
    Rolly shrugged. “Never had a home. Daddy left us, and Mama died. Wrangled for a while in Desolation. Had a woman once or twice. But the wanderlust caught me. Found Ahab and ya’ll in Tulsa. Otherwise, I got nobody. Nobody at all.”
    Grief grabbed Canyon’s shoulders. Neither did he, unless he counted those three mounds in Fish Creek, Missouri, outside the Baptist church. The gram-maw he’d loved and the ma and pa he’d never gotten to know. He ground his teeth in a new shame. No headstones yet after all these years, and him with money in his pocket.
    “Distant kin,” he said, shutting off yesterday and looking ahead. “You let Ahab know, won’t you? I’ll catch up with ya’ll down the road.”
    That would be easy. The Perkins gang had eluded the law since Missouri, but Canyon could find them in his sleep. Smell ’em, too.
    “Sure enough,” Gitts said, holding out a piece of meat. “Here’s some good roasted jackbunny to get you on your way.”
    Chewing and swallowing like it was his last meal, Canyon tossed the bone into nearby mesquite. He left a shred of meat on it,